1999 Sportscar Racing Results and Review

1999 was a season of consolidation and rebuilding.

Photo : Courtesy Sportscar World

The FIA's attempts to merge the ISRS with the GT1 category from the GT series, thankfully, failed and the FIA series fell back on a solely GT2 series. This, unsuprisingly led to another season of Oreca Viper dominance as Porsche failed to get their new 911 homologated for GT2, Marcos fell foul of the rules when it relocated its LM600s gearbox to the rear of the car and Lister made only sporadic outings into Europe.

Photo : Courtesy Sportscar World

The Lister team always ran competitively when they were out, but were never able to better the Oreca team's combination of outright pace and honed, professional team work.

Le Mans, as has become the norm, stood alone as, but licenced the Le Mans name to Don Panoz to expand his Petit Le Mans race into a series called the American Le Mans series.

BMW didn't start as Le Mans 24 Hour favourites, but came through a stiff battle to take the honours

Photo : Courtesy Sportscar World

The Moretti Ferrari 333SP WSC car failed to achieve a historic treble, but won at the Daytona 24 hours and Sebring 12 hours to give Ferrari their best sportscar season for decades. The two organising bodies in the US waged a war all season, but Don Panoz' cars won in GT and R&S took Leitzinger/Weaver to PSC WSC title, in both series.

Don Panoz then went on to cut the rug from the USSRC and the PSC by launching the Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta. The race, over 1000 miles was a great success with a big entry (including many cars of quality from the eastern side of the Atlantic), a dramatic Porsche GT1 back flip, and a Ferrari WSC win.

For 1999, Panoz has announced a series to ACO rules and teams and race tracks alike are lining up to take part.

The ISRS (for WSC cars) gained in strength in 1999. The series attracted large fields and produced good racing, only slightly marred by the dominance of Sospiri and Collard in Jabouille's Ferrari 333SP. This was strange, given that many teams ran the Ferrari and it would be unfair to say there was any obvious unfair advantage for the team, aside from having two fast young drivers.

Photo : Courtesy ISRS

The series has the feel of the BPR in it's heyday with a mix of quality professional drivers and fast (and a few not so) privateers. Aside from the FIA threat, the ISRS is looking good for '99.

In the UK, the BRDC grew bigger and better with titanic battles for overall and GT1 victories between Porsche GT1s, Listers and McLaren F1. Sensible restriction on new GT1s should keep series strong in '99, although the series is looking expensive to compete in and, with only limited TV coverage, it's hard to see how its current level of success can be maintained.

GT2 was dominated, like the FIA series, by the Dodge Viper which took Kurt Luby and Richard Dean to overall championship and even 1 outright race win. However, the ever swift Lotus Esprit V8 took a couple of wins and even Marcos picked up from the problems of the Millenium Motorsport team to take a GT2 win at Spa and an overall fastest lap in the wet Silverstone round.

The French series continues to look good, although it is still Porsche dominated and it was good to see some British runners (notably Marcos Mantis Challenge teams) make the trip to race in the last round of the series at Le Mans. It would be good to see more Anglo-French meetings.

For 1999, the FIA GT series has been split into the FIA GT series (for GT2 cars) and the FIA Prototype Cup for GT1s and WSC cars. So far, however, only Mercedes have shown any interest in running in the Prototype cup, as Porsche have withdrawn from all sportscar racing for a year, to see how the future regulations shape up. Ferrari have Ok'd updates to the 333SP, but have shown no desire to take on Mercedes on two fronts.

GT2 looks more hopeful as a gaggle of Vipers are expected to be out (although be very surprised if any are faster than Oreca's) and Porsche are threatening a new GT2 machine with (sadly) very GT1-like features. It's also likely that Marcos will be in there to tweak the giants' tails, although with GT2 becoming the top GT series, only a big budget sponsor will allow them to compete on equal terms.

There's also confusion to disagreement over whether races should be 15 minute sprints (Surely Mercedes aren't worried their cars aren't reliable?) or endurance races (which spectators, drivers and privateers all want). The sad fact is that Bernie Ecclestone wants to flog everything to TV, so anything that fits neatly into a 50 minute slot with 2 ad breaks is just fine. Pity he doesn't understand a thing about Sportscar racing. However, it may well be that TV will show no interest in overpriced events which, unless someone turns up with lots of cash and a competitive car, will be little more than lengthy Mercedes CLK adverts. This may be enough to tilt the balance of power back in the endurance racers' favour.

So, it's really 1992 all over again. Poor control on the kind of cars being produced has created some great racing cars, but driven budgets through the roof and discouraged all but the wealthiest manufacturers from taking part (even Porsche gave in against the Mercedes mega-buck!).